The Construction Industry is nationally important in terms of economic value and social concern. In addition to involving a significant portion of national productivity, the Construction Industry is responsible for building facilities and infrastructure to enable productivity. The Construction Industry provides shelter and the ability to access that shelter. The efficiency and forthrightness with which the Construction Industry operates can have far reaching impact on the economic well being of and quality of life of many people.
Construction can include many multifaceted interactions and events which are influenced by, and can influence, a wide number of entities and industries. Government entities, financial institutions, real estate developers, property owners, construction material providers, equipment and machinery manufacturers, regulators, planners, architects, unions, engineers and journeymen can all be closely affected by events in the construction industry. In addition, housing starts and construction projects can be key indicators as to the state of an economy.
Risk related to the Construction Industry can be subject to circumstances and developments involving any of these entities or interactions. Being kept apprised of the many details necessary to make informed decisions can be a difficult task.
An investor, compliance officer, developer, government entity, financial institution or other personnel typically have few resources available to assist them with the identification of present or potential risks associated with a particular entity, development or transaction involving the Construction Industry. Risks can be multifaceted and far reaching. The amount of information that needs to be considered to evaluate whether involvement with a particular Construction Industry entity poses a significant risk or should otherwise be restricted, is substantial.
However, institutions do not have available a mechanism which can provide real time assistance to assess one or more Risk variables associated with the Construction Industry, or otherwise qualitatively manage such risk. In the event of an investment problem, it is often difficult to quantify to regulatory bodies, shareholders, newspapers and/or other interested parties, the diligence exercised by the entity taking action to properly identify and respond to risk factors. Absent a means to quantify good business practices and diligent efforts to contain risk, an entity taking action may appear to be negligent in some respect.
General data services that are available to search news sources and other public information will accept a query and return a result. However, such services are not integrated into a risk management system. In addition, present data services only return a flat response to a query submitted without any further data mining or scrubbing. The inefficiency of having to manually ascertain what terms should be searched and then submit query that includes those terms makes these systems overbearing on a transaction by transaction basis. Also, over time, databases can accrue a wide range of inaccuracies and inconsistencies, such as misspelled names, inverted text, missing fields, alternate spelling of key phrases, and other blemishes. Fixing such faulty records by hand on a timeframe needed to perform risk management associated with a financial transaction may be impossible as well as expensive and could result in the introduction of even more errors.
Currently there is no convenient way to facilitate a comprehensive analysis of a Construction Industry related entity without strenuous research of multiple disparate sources. What is needed is a tool to facilitate Risk analysis of Construction Industry related subjects.